In this course you will learn to articulate your own concepts about (threatened) heritage and that of others. What is your heritage? Who defines heritage? Why is heritage under threat? How can we protect heritage?
WW1, WW2, Cold war politics and contemporary conflicts as well as continuing political and socio-economic inequalities and colonial pasts are all factors playing a role in the global heritage discussions and approaches to (or lack of ) valorization and protection of heritage. Hence, issues behind destruction or threats to heritage are related to complex issues, often connected to complex landscapes of wars, the war-on-terror, fundamentalism, migration, global warming, financial crises, inequality and diverse interests of local communities.
This course, sponsored by the LDE Centre for Global Heritage and Development and the Honours Academy of Leiden University, and the Netherlands Commission for UNESCO gave its support to one of the sections of the MOOC, will explore these issues. We wish to engage global communities and widen the perspective on threatened heritage. You can help us with this.

Reviews

EB

A very thought provoking course delivered by very engaging experts in their fields.

MM

Jul 22, 2017

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

Excellent course with a lot of information, interesting cases and useful readings!

From the lesson

Heritage and inequality

Hi everybody welcome to the second module! Last week we talked about the concept of heritage and how heritage can be very personal. This week we will dive into how heritage is actually defined, both within the field of (archaeological) heritage management, as well as for local communities. We will also discuss various forms of inequality which unfortunately can come with defining and framing something as heritage. Please watch the video's we have prepared for you first and then proceed with the quizz and case study!

Taught By

Dr. Sada Mire, Assistant Professor

Transcript

I think what is important to note is that UNESCO creates frameworks in which they define heritage. But at the end of the day, and in its core, it's you and me that define our own heritage. So it's the people that identify with it, the groups that identify with it, or on a national level, country that identify with it. So there is always this element that needs to be taken into consideration. I cannot tell someone in a different place that I'm not connected to what his heritage is, it's something that you feel, it's something very intrinsic. But what UNESCO does, it defines the type of heritage, just to make it more grasp. Just to be able to grasp it, in a sense. And also if you want to protect it, you need to know what you protect, so that's also why they define it. When it comes to ownership, I think that's a very tricky question to ask, because there's so many different levels of ownership. There's a moral ownership, there's a legal ownership, there's a political ownership. And I think that, if you look at the UNESCO framework, UNESCO is a member-state organization. Inscriptions, for example on the world heritage list, the representative list for intangible heritage, the memory of the world register. In this case, as there are national nominations put forward, sometimes driven through communities or institutions or cultural academic institutions, sometimes by government. But there's always a national element to it. In the case of intangible heritage, there's clearly that they will involve local community. So there needs to be caring capacity from the community, from the communities involved. They also clearly refer to minorities. But, at the end of the day, you have a political system that you work with, and it is a intergovernmental organization. So, who owns heritage? I'll leave that open for discussion. If in case for example, we've seen it on a television a lot recently, the City of Palmyra, and I've been there numerous times, always very much impressed about the size and the scope of the site. It's a World Heritage site, so you can say, okay, it's of outstanding universal value, so it's a site of humanity, a collective site to a certain extent. At the same time it's also a national icon of Syria, so it has a national element to it. And at the same time, what people tend to forget is that it was also a sight where many Bedouin communities have been living around or in, for centuries. And the question is, at the end of the day, which narrative is told? The one of UNESCO explaining its outstanding universal value, the one of the national authorities, as it is a national monument. You know, staging its significance on a national level. But is the story also told that it has been made a meeting point and a place where there are communities from the Bedouins that have been in the area? That's especially in conflict situations, very important to know, because if there's a situation where there's communities that had been living or connected to a certain site, that are being moved out, forced out. Or that have left the site for whatever reason, and they're not in a situation to tell the narrative, who will do it? Who will tell this narrative? And I think that's most of our academic institution, culture institutions, have an important role to play, and even UNESCO to a certain extent. Because it's telling the different facets of a site, it's representing the heritage.

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